Must We Be Perfect?

1

Must We Be Perfect?: A Case Against Supererogation

Penultimate Draft

Abstract: In this paper we offer an argument against supererogation and in favour of moral perfectionism. We argue three primary points: 1) That the putative moral category is not generated by any of the main normative ethical systems, and it is difficult to find space for it in these systems at all; 2) That the primary support for supererogation is based on intuitions, which can be undercut by various other pieces of evidence; and 3) That there are better reasons to favour perfectionism, including competing intuitions about the good-ought tie-up, and the epistemic preference for theoretical simplicity. Key Words: Supererogation; Perfectionism; Normative Ethics; Parsimony; Reasons; Intuitions

Must We Be Perfect?

2

1. Introduction1

Supererogatory actions are a putative category of moral actions which go above and

beyond what we are obliged to do. Since Urmson’s famous 1958 paper, ‘Saints and heroes’, the

topic of supererogation has benefitted from a surge of fascinating new literature. Most of us are

familiar with many common examples of supererogatory actions: the soldier who throws himself

on a grenade to save his friends; the doctor who decides to leave his practice behind to serve

during a malaria outbreak in a third-world country; the millionaire who gives away his entire

fortune to charity; etc. Many people find intuitive the thesis that such people have performed a

task so demanding that we could not possibly expect it of someone, and hence that such acts must

be supererogatory.

Yet this intuitive support is surprisingly fragile. There are undercutting defeaters or

plausible alternative interpretations for the most prominent supporting intuitions, and

supererogatory action is so poorly integrated into normative ethical theories that as soon as the

intuitions are defeated, much motivation for including it in one’s normative ethical theory

dissolves. We will argue, on these grounds and others, that we ought to give up the idea of

supererogatory action in favour of the more robust and well-supported view that the best and the

required are one and the same.

2. Thesis Clarification

Let us begin with some clarifications regarding our thesis: this will allow precision of

exposition as well as the refutation of certain philosophical objections to our view. We are arguing

for moral perfectionism, the view that no actions are supererogatory – that there is no such thing

1 We do not think it is possible to offer a comprehensive defence of our position in one paper. We appreciate, therefore, that some important objections to our thesis will inevitably go unanswered. It is our hope that we will not be misinterpreted as being unduly lenient on our own thesis. We have tried to identify the best arguments and objections for presentation here, with the hope of responding to further worthwhile objections at a later date.

Must We Be Perfect?

3

as going ‘beyond the call of duty’.2 The best possible action is always obligatory, on our view.

Defences of perfectionism in the literature are relatively rare except, perhaps, as part of general

defences of consequentialism. Our work here is unique in the literature simply in virtue of offering

an argument for this position that is not attached to a particular normative framework.

Defining Supererogation

‘Supererogation’ is often understood as meaning ‘good but not obligatory’. This is

inadequate. The reason for this is that actions may be less than obligatory but still, in some sense,

good. This is difficult to comprehend on the ethically minimal views we are attacking, since on

those views obligations tend to be easily achievable things which are bad if not done – like not

killing innocent people. But if perfectionism is at least possibly true, then fulfilling obligations may

be a much more stringent task than we might have considered. And in this case, an action which

falls short of being the best possible action – and which is therefore not obligatory – might still be

a (relatively) good one. For example, if utilitarianism is true, then the best use of money is probably

donation to an incredibly effective charity like the Anti Malaria Foundation. This is, perhaps,

obligatory. But donating it to a less effective charity – say, Compassion UK – might still be a good

thing to do. But clearly in this case the utilitarian would say that donating to Compassion UK is

not going beyond the call of duty, nor does it involve going the extra mile, or going above and

beyond obligations. It falls short of our obligations. And so there are at least two possible ways in

which an action can be good but not obligatory – by going beyond our obligations, or by falling

short (though not too far short) of our obligations. We take it that supererogation is concerned

only with the former, and we propose to christen the latter category ‘subobligation’.

2 There are many uses of the term ‘perfectionism’ in philosophy—we use the term as stated above. Of course, one may agree that it is impossible to act supererogatorily, but disagree that we ought to be perfect, given something like moral nihilism. Therefore, a general ‘ought’ to be perfect would follow from our argument only if moral nihilism is false.

Must We Be Perfect?

4

Supererogatory acts are often understood as being morally praiseworthy acts that are

optional. Benn (2018a) writes,

Like morally required actions, supererogatory actions are not forbidden and are thus permissible; unlike morally required acts, they are also ‘beyond duty’. As such, supererogatory actions are ‘optional’ in the sense that they are neither morally forbidden nor morally required. (p. 2) Benn’s use of ‘optional’ to refer to acts that are not morally forbidden or morally required follows

McNamara (1996) in being a distinctly moral sense of optionality, and constitutes a feature of

supererogatory acts that she claims all views of supererogation agree on. She further argues that,

while such actions are praiseworthy by nature, they needn’t require extreme amounts of sacrifice

to be supererogatory; rather, they must only be comparatively costly (p. 9). We here want to agree

with Benn and others on the optionality of supererogatory acts and remain neutral on the question

of how costly they must be in order to be supererogatory, as such a question is tangential to our

main argument.

We will postpone further detailed explication of our view. But we note the following

features of perfectionism, which are important for our defence of it: firstly, perfectionism does

not entail that there is only ever one right action. There may be many joint best actions available

at any one time. Secondly, perfectionism, though it sets high standards, is still sensitive to varying

degrees of goodness. Some non-obligatory actions may still be better than others. We will later

argue that this spectral quality of morality actually fits better with perfectionism than with

supererogationism. Finally, our version of perfectionism is consistent with a number of different

normative ethical theories, and with a number of different views on blameworthiness, culpability,

and freedom.

3. Where does supererogation live?

In surveying the moral landscape, it is helpful to ask ourselves where we might find the

home of supererogatory actions. Much of the literature on supererogation uses the language of

Must We Be Perfect?

5

‘fitting’ or ‘making room’ with respect to supererogation, due to the initial difficulty of situating

the category among the rest of various frameworks’ normative furniture (McNamara 1996, Heyd

2015b). Because talk of the supererogatory often involves talk of obligations, it is important that a

theory provides an answer to the questions: What are we obliged to do, and how are we to

distinguish these obligations from actions that are supererogatory? In our attempt to pin down

which frameworks generate the category of supererogation, we will look at typical formulations of

three prominent normative theories—Kantian deontology, Utilitarianism, and virtue ethics—as

well as non-standard versions of these theories and some competing frameworks.

Five Aims: Methodological Preliminaries

This section of our paper has five aims which we think are important for our thesis. Aim

1) is targeted: it addresses those who hold to one of these normative theories and commends

perfectionism to them. We take it that there are at least some reasons to hold to the theories we

consider, and we think that insofar as they are plausible theories, for those who hold to them,

there is commensurate reason to reject supererogation. Aim 2) is a related one: we take it that

there is at least some justification for the theories we consider, and that insofar as there is, and

insofar as most people have a degree of agnosticism about which ethical theory is true, to the

same extent they should avoid supererogationism. Aim 3) is to try and show that, at best, viable

moral theories tend to be consistent with supererogation rather than actually generating the category.

Most theories we consider are in tension with supererogation, rather than just not providing a

natural home for it. So even if we can find some theories which make room for supererogation,

this will not necessarily be enough to give supererogationism a reasonable probability even given

those theories. Aim 4) is to illustrate the theoretical complexity required for systems involving

supererogation. In order for a normative theory to convincingly suggest supererogationism, it is

important that it not do so merely in virtue of being extremely open to add-on normative

frameworks. Aim 5) is to show that in most cases, belief in supererogation results primarily from

Must We Be Perfect?

6

first-order, applied-level intuitions about the extent of our obligations, rather than being

derivative of higher-order ethical theories. This is important because it highlights the

vulnerability of these beliefs: rather than being firmly grounded in robust ethical theory, they

result primarily from intuitions, which we think are significantly undermined by the

considerations we identify later in the paper. Since we argue that at best, simple theories tend only

to permit supererogation, we think this shows that belief in supererogationism is based primarily

on first-order intuition rather than on broader normative theory.

Deontology

Given that supererogation is defined largely by its relation to moral obligations, it seems

natural to try to locate this category in Kantianism. However, Kantians are largely in agreement

that such a category is senseless (Baron 1987, p. 237-238).3 The common Kantian argument against

such a category goes as follows:

P1: An action has moral worth in so far as it is done from duty to the moral law. P2: Supererogatory actions, by definition, are not done from duty to the moral law. C: Therefore, supererogatory actions do not have moral worth. This is a problem, because moral worth – indeed, superior moral worth – is an essential feature of

supererogatory actions. But traditional Kantianism has no concept of moral worth as being

separate from the sense of dutiful conformance to the moral law with which an action is done. For

Kant, no action is unqualifiedly morally good which is not done with good will.4 ‘In Kant’s terms,

a good will is a will whose decisions are wholly determined by moral demands or, as he often refers

to this, by the Moral Law’ (Johnson and Cureton 2016). Because supererogatory actions are, by

definition, actions which are not morally demanded, they cannot be done with good will. It is

3 ‘Some, like von Herbert, believe that Kant's ethics asks too little, requiring only minimal decency and saying nothing about the ‘higher flights of morality.’ Others, reading the texts differently, believe that his theory asks too much, demanding total devotion to morality and treating everything worth doing (and perhaps more) as a duty. But, despite their differences, the two sets of critics concur in taking the central problem to be Kant's failure to recognize the category of the supererogatory.’ 4 ‘There is nothing it is possible to think of anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be good without limitation, excepting only a good will.’ (Emboldened text our own). Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 4:393.

Must We Be Perfect?

7

therefore difficult to see how supererogatory actions could be morally superior to obligatory

actions, since only the latter are capable of containing the only unqualified moral good. The

Kantian is forced to admit that there are no morally valuable acts that one is not bound by duty to

perform. Many Kantians cite Kant’s own unease with acts of exceeding virtue, fearing them to be

acts of vanity, or self-congratulatory. Those who do not accept this interpretation of them suspect

that Kantians may need to claim that these acts, generally thought to be supererogatory, are actually

required. (Timmerman 2005)

Those who have tried to position supererogation within a Kantian framework typically

turn to Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. (Hill 1971) An imperfect duty is,

simply put, a duty to do something sometimes. Importantly, an imperfect duty is not the state of

occasionally having a duty to do something; rather, it is a duty one always has, which is vague in

its terms. In his paper ‘Kant on Imperfect Duty and Supererogation’, Thomas Hill Jr. proposes

some criteria for a supererogatory act:

(a) is of a sort commended by a principle of wider imperfect duty,

(b) is motivated by a sense of duty (or, perhaps, respect for moral reasons),

(c) is neither forbidden nor required by another, more stringent duty.

(d) is in a context where no alternative is required by more stringent duty and there is at least one alternative that

is neither forbidden by more stringent duty nor commanded by other principles of wide duty, and

(e) is done by an agent who has adopted the relevant principle of wider imperfect duty and has often and continually

acted on that principle. (p. 71)

The common example of an imperfect duty is charitable giving. If I am required by duty to

sometimes give money to charity, then it might be thought that any particular act of charitable giving

is supererogatory – good to do, but not required.

However, it is not clear that frequently performing an imperfect duty could account for

supererogatory actions. Hill’s criterion that a supererogatory act be motivated by a sense of duty

has been criticised by Marcia Baron (1987): ‘The real difficulty is that supererogationists are trying

Must We Be Perfect?

8

to get away from duty, but the Kantian analysis keeps pulling what is supposed to be ‘beyond’ duty

back under the rubric of duty.’ (p. 244) It is far from clear even on initial inspection that an action

done according to a sense of duty (as Hill’s supererogatory actions are) could be supererogatory.

But the most alarming feature of Hill’s case is seen when bearing in mind that supererogatory

actions are supposed to be better than what duty requires.

Given this, Hill’s conception of superogatory actions simply does not account for their

status as morally superior. Take, for instance, an imperfect duty to feed your child. This is very

plausibly an imperfect duty, since we are required to sometimes feed our children, but we ought

not to always be feeding them, and it is not usually necessary to feed them at any particular time.

Certainly feeding my child more and more often would not account for better and better actions

– overfeeding my child could be as pernicious as underfeeding her. And it is clearly implausible

that a given act of feeding my child should be considered above and beyond the call of duty! And

so, even though handing my child an extra apple or feeding them at any particular time could perhaps

be considered ‘good but not required’, this is not because they exhibit any peculiar virtue: it just

reflects the fact that there is not always a unique, determinate course of virtue. We again appeal to

the insufficiency of the good-but-not-required definition of supererogation, which, as we

previously noted, could also pick out ‘good’ subobligatory actions or joint best actions.

A conception of supererogatory acts must be able to account for their moral superiority over

actions which are obligatory. Kant’s system can account for certain non-moral goods – for

instance, aesthetic good, or happiness – which some action may aim at. Yet, again, because the

only good in Kant’s moral philosophy is good will, it is difficult to see how appealing to non-moral

goods would be able to account for the perceived moral superiority of supererogatory actions.

Because the problems with finding supererogation in Kantianism seem to be the result of

Kant’s constraints on sources of goodness, some may look to other deontological systems to find

the category. For example, a theory which does seem to allow room for supererogationism is

Scanlon’s contractualism; however, the primary reason this theory is consistent with

Must We Be Perfect?

9

supererogation is simply because it has such limited scope. Scanlon (1998) has a theory of what

makes something wrong, a theory which itself has some complexity. ‘An act is wrong if its

performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any set of principles for the general

regulation of behavior that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced,

general agreement.’ Similarly so for right actions: if an action wouldn’t be disallowed by the same

sort of principles, then the action is right to do. This alone, however, is not enough to generate

supererogation. Part of our understanding of going above and beyond one’s obligations is that the

action is better than an action which merely fulfills an obligation. On Scanlon’s framework of right

and wrong action, there is no account of goodness. Therefore, it is hard to imagine how to conceive

of supererogatory actions being better than obligatory actions. Because of its limited scope, in

order to actually give an account of right action and of moral value, it looks like Scanlon needs to

adjoin a completely independent account of an action’s goodness, and the resulting hybrid will

involve considerable theoretical complexity - which we take to be a theoretical vice later in the

paper.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is, of course, a framework known for its demanding moral obligations,

arising from the lack of space for supererogation. A general utilitarian argument against

supererogation can be given as follows:

P1: Supererogatory actions, by definition, go beyond what is required of us. P2: We are required to choose actions which maximise good results over ones which do not (standard utilitarianism). P3: Doing the maximally good action in any situation is generally considered supererogatory (i.e., giving away the majority of our income to charity). P4: But there is a contradiction: supererogatory actions can’t be required (P1).

C: Therefore, no actions are supererogatory.

The standard ‘good-ought tie-up’, common to nearly all consequentialist frameworks,

creates the extreme difficulty in positing a category of actions which are neither required, nor

Must We Be Perfect?

10

prohibited.5 What, on traditional utilitarianism, can we say is required, besides acting to maximize

good results? And indeed, we ought not to do anything less. So actions which would typically be

conceived of as being supererogatory will either maximize the good, or they will not, and we are

required to do or not do them based on their outcome. Therefore, we cannot, on standard

utilitarianism, conceive of actions which are very good to do, but not required.

Rule utilitarianism is sometimes thought to allow room for supererogationism, or perhaps

even to generate the category. Rule utilitarianism holds that we are obligated to always follow rules

that, generally speaking, maximize utility when adhered to. For instance, suppose a rule dictates

that one should give 20% of their income to charity, because doing more than that would weary

or frustrate them, causing them to have a bad attitude and to resent or cease all charitable giving,

or because giving more than that would produce more bad than good due to resulting financial

distress. Then, for Mary, there are two choices of actions which may be optimal: she could give

20%, or she could give more than 20%. The supererogationist might say that giving at least 20%

is obligatory, while giving more than 20% is supererogatory.

Rule utilitarianism is sometimes understood in at least two ways: as something like a

pragmatic version of act utilitarianism, or as a strict set of rules generated by rules-consequences

relationships. Under neither conception is it easy to see how Mary could act supererogatorily. If

Mary is a pragmatic act utilitarian and thinks she is vulnerable to altruism-weariness then giving

more than 20% would be morally inferior since it can be expected to have worse consequences.

In order for rule utilitarianism to not collapse into act utilitarianism, obligations must be based on

expected, and not actual, utility.

[I]f full rule-consequentialism claims that an act is wrong if and only if the foreseeable consequences of rules allowing that act are sub-optimal, rule- consequentialism cannot hold that an act is wrong if and only if the actual consequences of rules allowing that act will be sub-optimal. (Hooker 2016)

5 Famously, Moore (1948).

Must We Be Perfect?

11

If she is a pragmatic act utilitarian but is confident that she is not vulnerable to weariness then it

seems as though she is obliged to give more, since the rule is there only to avoid the computational

problems of calculating consequences for every individual act. But if better consequences from a

rule-deviant action are readily recognised in a particular case, the pragmatic concerns disappear,

and it would be supremely irrational for a pragmatic act utilitarian to preserve the rule when the

pragmatic reasons for the rule are no longer germane.

If Mary is a strict rule utilitarian, on the other hand, then—since following the rules takes

precedence over particular circumstances—she is obliged to follow the rule and give only 20% no

matter what. Giving more constitutes a wrongful failing of obligation, not a morally superior

supererogatory act. So, it does not seem as though rule utilitarianism will simply or clearly make

room for supererogation.6

Virtue ethics

There has been a recent increase of philosophical interest in exploring supererogation

within virtue theoretic frameworks. Although at this point virtue theory may appear to be the most

promising avenue for accommodating supererogatory actions, here we will also struggle to find a

natural place for the category. In the words of Heyd (2015b), ‘It turned out that fitting

supererogation into virtue-based moral theory proved to be a more difficult task than doing so in

utilitarian and deontological theories.’7 But seeing why this is requires understanding the unique

virtue theoretical understanding the world. Virtue ethics calls good that which promotes

flourishing, particularly the flourishing of an agent’s character, to the fulfilment of her telos.

Standard conceptions of right actions from a virtue theoretic perspective, such as Hursthouse

6 J.S. Mill does recognise a distinction between obligatory actions and non-obligatory meritorious actions in ‘Auguste Comte and Positivism’; however, he does not explain how this would fit into a utilitarian framework, and indeed Mill’s utilitarianism is notorious for being (at best) at the fringes of what would today be labeled ‘utilitarianism’. 7 The reason for Heyd’s difficulty was that the picture of the world assumed by virtue theories did not map on directly to the liberal conception of the post-enlightenment world from whence ideas of supererogation arose.

Must We Be Perfect?

12

(1999), take a form similar to this: ‘An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would

characteristically do in the circumstances.’ (p. 28).

But recent work on virtue ethics and supererogation have rejected Hursthouse’s model,

instead favouring a ‘target-centered approach’ (Swanton 2001). Rebecca Stangl (2015), who adopts

this approach herself, believes that supererogationism makes sense on this account of right action.

In Stangl’s paper, ‘Neo-Aristotelian Supererogation’, she quotes from the Nicomachean Ethics:

[T]here are many ways to be in error – for badness is proper to the indeterminate, as the Pythagoreans pictured it, and good to the determinate. But there is only one way to be correct. That is why error is easy and correctness is difficult, since it is easy to miss the target and difficult to hit it. And so for this reason also excess and deficiency are proper to vice, the mean to virtue; ‘for we are noble in only one way, but bad in all sorts of ways.’8

Roger Crisp (2013) argues that we do not have to interpret this passage to mean that, in

any given circumstance, there is only one correct action. However, Crisp does think that this

passage implies a strict dichotomy. Either an action of ours hits the mark, in which case it is

virtuous, or it does not, in which case, it is vicious. And so, all virtuous actions are equally virtuous,

and we are obliged simply to only perform virtuous actions. On Crisp’s account, there is no room

for supererogation in an Aristotelian account of virtuous action. Stangl responds to Crisp that it

‘is implausible to think that all virtuous actions are equally virtuous.’ (p. 353)

We agree that this seems implausible. But it also seems, on this view, as though there must

be an action, or multiple actions, that are optimally virtuous. Stangl believes that actions which are

more virtuous than they need to be in order to ‘realize their end’ or ‘hit the target’ are

supererogatory. But conceive of it this way: the target is presumably either extended (in the sense

of including non-best possible actions) or punctiliar. If punctiliar, then clearly there is no room for

supererogation. If extended, then there might be. If the target is extended but admits no degrees

of virtuosity, then it will allow no supererogation. But if it admits of degrees of virtuosity, then

8 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106b, 29ff., quoted in Stangl, pp. 351-52.

Must We Be Perfect?

13

there is room for supererogation. The problem here, however, is explaining why the real target is

not the most virtuous option. Unless there is an adjunctive theory explaining why the boundaries

of the target should be wider than simply the most virtuous possible option, and why they fall

where they do, such wideness is arbitrary. For these reasons, the target-centered approach to virtue

theory does not more easily allow for supererogatory actions than the standard approach does.

These arguments from some of the major normative ethics systems are not intended to be

conclusive. There are, of course, several deontological, consequentialist, and virtue theoretical

arguments that purport to make room for supererogatory acts (respectively, Brinkmann 2015,

Hooker 2002, Kawall 2009). The point of this overview was just to show that, on the face of things,

none of the three major normative theories seem to have a natural place for them. Perhaps space

can be created in some or all of these systems; but now the question becomes: why make the

space? What motivates us to try to fit such a category of actions in our normative ethical

framework?

4. Intuitions and supererogation

We suggest that the main support for supererogatory actions comprises a variety of related

intuitions. This is not to say that we think intuitions are the only reasons able to be given in favour

of supererogationism; famously, the Catholic intellectual tradition accepts the category as a way of

distinguishing ordinary people from saintly, or particularly excellent, people (Alston 1989, Wynn

2015). Additionally, one may have other reasons for finding a satisficing normative framework

convincing, and conclude that, therefore, supererogatory actions must be possible. This is not

necessarily a slur – we also take it that almost all ethical opinion is based on intuitions of varying

kinds. But it is very plausible that the main basis for most people’s belief in supererogation is their

intuitive belief in propositions like the following:

‘Forgiving my son’s killer would be supererogatory’ ‘I am not obliged to give everything I own to the poor’ ‘The Good Samaritan went beyond the call of duty’

Must We Be Perfect?

14

These intuitions are fairly widespread, and fairly easy to arrive at oneself. There is certainly a sense

in which many intuitions which seem to favour supererogationism. These intuitions are of varying

kinds: intuitions that morality is not as demanding as perfectionists suggest, that we are not

blameworthy for failing to achieve the best, that the best moral acts are in some sense optional,

and so on. We propose that, on further evaluation, any intuitive support for supererogation

collapses on a number of levels.

We note firstly that even the general trend of intuitions supporting supererogationism is

doubtful. As we will later show in the discussion of linguistic simplicity, it is difficult to see what

obligation even means in supererogatory systems. It is therefore difficult to see how anyone could

genuinely have the above intuitions with an adequate grasp of the concepts involved. Moreover,

intuitions in support of perfectionism are common. Heyd (2015a) notes:

This ‘good-ought tie-up’ is a theoretically attractive principle: whatever is good, ought to be done. If an action is good, then there must be reasons for doing it. If it is the best possible action, the reasons for doing it are conclusive, that is outweighing all other reasons for not doing it (or doing something else). Failing to do the best action cannot therefore be immune from blame or condemnation. Or, in other words, doing the best is always obligatory, never optional. Supererogation is impossible.9

This is related to the ‘paradox of supererogation’, which asks how it is possible that a good is not

a duty. As we have explained, there is no natural answer for this in any of the major normative

theories surveyed. Indeed, the main normative theories arguably lead us to expect that goods are

always duties. We will reinforce this intuition with our discussion of theoretical simplicity anon.

The intuitions favouring the theoretical simplicity of perfectionism are quite strong, and must be

considered as evidence alongside the evidence from intuitions about supererogation.

As well as doubting the content of supererogatory intuitions and noting the strong

intuitions in favour of perfectionism, we can offer a variety of undercutting defeaters against

9 To avoid mischaracterizing Heyd, we note that this quote does not describe his own view ( in his book Supererogation (1982) he defends a supererogationist framework) but rather the view of someone who holds to the good-ought tie-up.

Must We Be Perfect?

15

supererogatory intuitions. We begin with some brief considerations against particular pro-

supererogation intuitions.

It is thought by some that a good action’s being optional adds some value to it. This is

taken to support supererogationism since supererogationism makes certain acts morally optional.

Heyd (1982) argues that this ‘unqualified’ freedom to act or not act is precisely what makes

supererogatory actions so praiseworthy—this freedom entails that the action was performed, not

from fear of sanction, but from personal preferences and values (p. 175). We appreciate this

intuition and want to say two things in response. First, it might be the case that if

supererogationism is true, then there is a distinct kind of value in its moral optionality that cannot

be posited on perfectionism. We do not need to deny this here, for our aim in this section is not

to show that supererogationism is false – only that the intuitions in support of it can be explained

in a way that is consistent with perfectionism. For this, all we need to do is give a plausible

explanation of why it seems very strongly to us that optional acts have distinct value in a way that

is consistent with perfectionism.

Second, we submit that these intuitions can be explained without the kind of optionality

that supererogationism provides. There are at least two other sources that are adequate to explain

the goodness of these kinds of actions: libertarian free will and unrewarded goods. Libertarian

choices for the good are thought to be good precisely because the agent did not have to perform

it – there is a sense in which the action was optional, even if that is not a moral sense. We can

think of this kind of optionality as the freedom from threat of sanction. For instance, one has the

option of forgoing parental rights, even if doing so is morally wrong. If there is no threat of

sanction, then we recognise that the act was not performed in order to avoid such sanction. This

is augmented when the choice is unrewarded. It is very plausible that the main reason optional acts

are good is because they are done truly selflessly – there is no reward in them, no obvious gain for

the agent. So, it is perfectly plausible that our intuition that optional acts are good is derivative of

our appreciation for selflessness, as the supererogationist admits. Where we believe the

Must We Be Perfect?

16

supererogationist errs is in her assertion that such selflessness of motivation can only be found on

a perfectionist framework. Indeed, this selflessness does not seem to have very much to do with

supererogation.

It is objected at this juncture by Rebecca Stangl that these explanations of the exceptional

goodness of more demanding acts are not the best way to account for certain mundane scenarios.10

[They] point to the example of missing a flight through their own negligence and arriving at the

destination at 2am instead of 8pm. The sister collecting them from the airport does better if she

still agrees to come out at 2am rather than the previously agreed 8pm. Since neither case

exemplifies a greater degree of libertarian freedom, and since the sister receives no reward in either

case, these perfectionist explanations do not seem to explain the relative quality of arriving at 2am.

The above account is unclear, since it compares two actions in two different situations.

Presumably the best (or joint best) action in both cases is to pick up the passenger when they arrive

- after all, if the passenger arrived at 8pm as planned, it would hardly be morally superior for the

sister to arrive at 2am! It just happens that the best thing to do in the punctual case is not too great

a sacrifice for the sister. This should not surprise us: we already know that morality is sometimes

easy, and sometimes more difficult. Perfection demands more at some times than others. So,

although the perfectionist will say that they are equally good in some sense (in that they are both

best actions given each circumstance), they can still grant that the non-punctual case involves a

better action in another sense. The challenge is whether perfectionists can give a good explanation

of this ‘betterness’ without recourse to supererogation.

In fact, we can: namely, the sacrifice and selflessness involved. As [our interlocutor] writes,

‘the obvious answer is that the [2am] pickup costs my sister more.’ They go on to conclude that in

doing so, the sister ‘goes the extra mile’. We agree fully with the initial diagnosis: indeed, the

suggestion that some ‘optional’ actions are better on account of their being more selfless is already

10 In comments on an earlier draft of this paper given at the Logos Workshop, University of Notre Dame, 2016.

Must We Be Perfect?

17

present in our suggestion that the good of unrewarded virtue is derivative of the good of

selflessness. This explains the situation in a way that is consistent with our common intuitions, and

yet reveals no need to involve notions of supererogation.

One worry with cases like the airport scenario – and perhaps a subconscious worry with

perfectionism more generally – is that suggesting that we are obliged to perform these demanding

acts of kindness yields an aberrant view of moral life: it seems to suggest that the moral life consists

of no more than a multiplicity of extravagant, unrelated and disproportionate acts of kindness and

self-sacrifice – an intuition not consonant with most people’s view of the ideally virtuous person.

Susan Wolf famously raises a similar critique in ‘Moral Saints’, arguing that the lives of ‘moral

saints’—which she defines as people whose every act is as morally good as possible (p. 419)—

neglect other goods and values in the attaining of solely moral perfection. Benn (2015) argues that

the demandingness of perfection takes the form of a constraint on the autonomy of the agent,

shrinking her set of permissible actions down to a small pool. She coins the ‘Confinement

Objection’, which holds that a moral theory is implausibly demanding if it constrains the set of

actions available to us in such a way. This is one sort of demandingness objection: that the

demands themselves are too difficult or constricting to be required of, or even good for, the agent.

In another paper, Benn (2018b) argues for a different sort of demandingness objection:

that perfectionism, when demanded of someone, undercuts itself by making it even harder for the

agent to do good. ‘[T]he consequences of believing ourselves to be morally obliged to do what is

morally best are likely to be depression and anxiety, especially given that moral standards are often

viewed as having an external source.’ (p.17) Such mental strain, she argues, can cause us to focus

too much on avoiding sanctions. ‘[B]y trying to avoid failing to meet the standards, we tend to

avoid meeting them.’ (p. 18) This critique of what she calls ‘psychological perfectionism’ recalls

Parfit’s well-known critique of consequentialist moral theories (1984), where he argues that such

theories are ‘self-effacing’ (part 1, section 10, pp. 24-25). That is, by trying or intending to fulfil the

aims of some consequentialist theories (e.g. maximizing overall happiness) we prevent ourselves

Must We Be Perfect?

18

from fulfilling the these aims as well as we might otherwise have done had we mentally

accepted some other normative framework.

It would be ignorant to deny that moral anxiety can impede one’s ability to fulfil their

obligations. We hope we have made it clear throughout the paper, however, that perfectionism is

not committed to any detailed view of what the perfect moral life looks like – any such caricatures

are a function of a presumed set of values not central to (or even associated with) perfectionism.

Perfectionism is compatible with the thesis, for example, that the perfect life involves considerable

amounts of mundane actions oriented towards particular goals and callings, rather than a

disconnected series of extravagantly and unnecessarily sacrificial actions. It does make room, of

course, for extravagant sacrifice.

Additionally, Benn’s picture of moral anxiety seems not to apply to normative frameworks

like virtue ethics, which standardly denies deontic concepts like obligations, duties, rights, etc.

Virtue ethics generally prefers a picture where there are no distinctly moral ‘oughts’, and holds that

to say we ought to do or ought not to do something is just to describe how close to, or removed

from, the ideal human such behaviour would be. Perfectionism may be true in the absence of

obligations, so long as there is no way to go beyond or do better than what we ought to do.

Another pro-supererogation intuition is that we are not always blameworthy when we fail

to be perfect. Likewise, this is easily explicable without the resources of supererogationism. A very

simple reason exists for this: we are not always blameworthy when we fail to be perfect because

there are exculpating factors other than an action not being obligatory. For example, exculpating

factors include ignorance, practical inability, extreme demandingness, and so on. Perfectionists are

not committed to the view that anything less than perfection is blameworthy, as we note later in

the context of responding to various other putatively pro-supererogation intuitions.11

11 In any case, why think that we are not always blameworthy? Maybe we are just really, really bad. We wish to leave this position open.

Must We Be Perfect?

19

Let us turn to a more global concern about moral justification. Concerns have been raised

regarding the possibility of genuinely justified moral knowledge – most notably, on the basis of

evolutionary debunking arguments.12 We believe that there is considerable force to these

arguments, in which case most – if not all – moral claims are suspect.

The global success of sceptical arguments is not required for our thesis, however. We can

still grant that intuitions reliably grant us a significant amount of moral knowledge – about whether

pleasure is a good, for example. But on the face of it, whether a good action is supererogatory or

obligatory seems so obscure that it is incredibly difficult to see how we could have any reliable

knowledge about this at all. If obligation does not fall at the end of the moral spectrum, how do

we know where it falls? Are almost all good actions obligatory? Are virtually no actions obligatory?

How are we supposed to judge? And how is it at all plausible that the selection pressures facing

early hominids were ones that helped them to make these sorts of obscure metaphysical

judgments? We will develop this point later in our discussion of maximal degree simplicity. But

for now it is worth noting the ease with which scepticism arises when we ask how we know where

the dividing line between obligatory and supererogatory sits and why it sits there.

A final intuition that seems to support supererogationism is the intuition that ‘we’re not

really that bad’. Perfectionism is often associated with the idea that buying a frivolous cup of coffee

constitutes a shirking of our obligations and is a blameworthy act (though later in the paper we

will show why these claims do not necessarily follow from perfectionism). It seems implausible to

many people that they fail to meet most of their obligations and fail so frequently. While it is

consistent with our thesis that most people fulfil most of their obligations (though we consider it

unlikely), we note here simply that this intuition about our general goodness is not as secure as we

would like. In the first place, the empirical data are clear that most of us are not very good when

it comes to certain evils. For example, most of us are content with living in luxury while others

12 E.g. Street, ‘A Darwinist Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value’.

Must We Be Perfect?

20

live in abject poverty, even when these facts are well-known to us and small sacrifices of our own

could relieve considerable poverty elsewhere in the world. Most of us are also perfectly at ease

with apathetic and thoughtless contributions to corporate evils, and most of us are small steps

away from being moral villains if only our life circumstances turned out differently. It is quite likely,

in light of these, that the main reason we are convinced of our own decency is renormalising our

moral calibration in light of the fact that everyone around us acts fairly similarly. More on this

shortly.

There are empirical data supporting the claim that we are prone to overestimate our own

rectitude. Illusory superiority is a well-known psychological phenomenon, according to which

people have a tendency to overestimate their abilities in an enormous variety of domains – IQ,

popularity, health, driving ability, and so on. This generates the amusing statistic that the large

majority of people consider themselves to be generally above average. Particularly interesting is

the Dunning-Kruger effect, where it is low-skilled experimental participants who have a particular

tendency to overestimate their own abilities, and an inability to recognise their own inabilities. This

indicates an analogue in the moral sphere: we would expect people in general to overestimate their

own moral stature,13 and in particular we would expect the most morally bankrupt to suffer from

this effect the most. So our tendency to believe that we generally fulfil our obligations is entirely

to be expected given the general empirical data, the intuitive plausibility of supererogationism and

the results of moral psychology, which all mutually reinforce each other.

This is not the only relevant psychological evidence. Moral self-licensing is another well-

documented phenomenon whereby subjects tend to act less morally when they have previously

acted morally. Remarkably, people have a tendency to act less morally even just after imagining

themselves acting morally (see Merritt et al 2010). Humans have a tendency to overestimate their

own moral goodness, and even to use their own morality as an excuse for acting wrongly in future.

13 This has, in fact, been documented. See Hoorens, ‘Self-Favoring Biases, Self-Presentation, and the Self-Other Asymmetry in Social Comparison’.

Must We Be Perfect?

21

Even thinking of themselves as moral makes them prone – unknown to them – to act wrongly.

This constitutes a further category of evidence showing that humans are probably significantly

worse than they generally consider themselves to be.14

Even in the absence of empirical evidence, we would probably expect humans to

significantly underestimate the number of obligations they have. Why? If most humans are selfish

and judgmental, and if they drastically fail to meet their obligations, it is very plausible that they

would both lower their expectations and judge themselves relative to those around them. Humans

have a very strong tendency to judge others and to compare themselves to others, and so the

‘average person’ becomes the relevant comparison class for moral self-judgment, rather than the

actual standard of obligation. But since most humans are far from perfect, so they reduce their

expectations accordingly. Indeed, retaining a high standard of obligations would make inter-human

comparison very difficult, since almost all humans would fail drastically and so only be marginally

different from each other. There is thus good practical reason for humans to renormalise their

measure of obligation by limiting obligations to what might be expected of the average person.

This allows a much more sensitive comparison of different humans where we really can insist that

we are importantly better than others.

In sum, then, there is ample, independent, empirical plausibility to the thesis that we are

not really as good as we are prone to think. This – though not required by perfectionism – is

consonant with it, and lends credibility to it as well as undermining any objections predicated on

our moral decency.

5. Perfectionism is theoretically simpler

Having undercut much intuitive or theoretical support for supererogationism, we now turn to our

central positive argument for perfectionism: that perfectionism is theoretically simpler in a number

14 To be clear, we are not claiming that these experimental results are impossible – or even difficult – to explain on supererogationism. We only suggest that they undercut the force of the objection to perfectionism that we’re not so bad – humans are notoriously prone to overestimating their goodness.

Must We Be Perfect?

22

of senses. We, along with others, have argued elsewhere that simplicity is an index of truth,15

though we do not have space to defend that assumption here. Note, however, that in the absence

of empirical evidence, simplicity is an extremely strong criterion for determining how likely a theory

is to be true. So, all else (in particular, explanatory power) being equal, a simpler theory is more

likely to be true. We have argued in the previous section that the explanatory power of

perfectionism is no worse than that of supererogationism, so that if perfectionism wins on

simplicity, it is a stronger theory overall.

There are at least three respects in which perfectionism is simpler than supererogationism:

linguistic simplicity, ideological parsimony, and maximal degree simplicity. We will take each of

these in turn.

There has been much debate about lexical and syntactic simplicity, mostly to do with the

length of expression of some hypothesis or other in a given language. For example, it is often held

that hypotheses which can be expressed by a shorter string in given computing languages are

simpler and more likely to be true. There are many cases where simplicity in natural languages is

preferred, or where there is a preference for predicates occurring in natural language over

gerrymandered predicates like ‘grue’. Linguistic simplicity is often indicative, though not

constitutive, of conceptual simplicity.

Perfectionism is linguistically simple in the following sense: it maintains that ‘ought’ is

univocal. This can perhaps best be seen by contrasting it with what supererogationism says about

these kinds of words. According to supererogationism, ‘ought’ can imply an obligation, as in, ‘you

ought not to steal that ice cream’. But it can also mean something relating to supererogation, as in,

‘you ought to be perfect’. This latter proposition is incredibly plausible. It is good to be perfect,

and if moral reasons are intrinsically motivational or reason-giving, then an action’s being good

gives one a normative reason to bring it about. It is overwhelmingly plausible that the reasons in

15 See, for example, Miller 2016.

Must We Be Perfect?

23

favour of an action are intimately linked with the concept of ‘ought’, and so the more reasons there

are in favour of an action the stronger the ‘ought’. So, given the overwhelming moral reasons in

favour of being perfect, it is highly probable that we ought to be perfect. But the supererogationist

finds it much more difficult to explain what is meant by ‘ought’ in this case. They will have to give

a meaning of ‘ought’ distinct from the special sense of ‘ought’ they give in assertions of obligation.

And this multiplies the senses of ‘ought’ and so introduces needless linguistic complexity. By

contrast, the perfectionist has a simple explanation of ‘ought’: to say that we ought to do something

means that we have good moral reasons to do it, and the strength of the ‘ought’ varies in line with

the strength of those reasons. This is a far simpler view of our moral discourse, and a far simpler

view of the relationship between reasons and obligations.

This simplicity is arguably due to a deeper – and probably more relevant – simplicity, viz.

ideological parsimony. Ideological parsimony has various aspects, the most important of which is

the minimisation of concepts – we want to explain as much of the world as possible with as few

conceptual resources as possible. Ideological parsimony may be quantitative—fewer concepts all

together—or it may be qualitative—fewer types of concepts. These are what make for an elegant

and genuinely explanatory system. But it is clear in light of the foregoing discussion that

supererogationism involves a gratuitous inflation of both quantity and types of moral concepts

employed in our deontic logic. Perfectionists have moral reasons and a conception of ‘ought’ that

strengthens linearly with it and have just two fundamental categories – obligatory and non-

obligatory. By contrast, supererogationists have obligatory actions sitting in the middle of the

moral spectrum, with two completely different kinds of actions each side: on one side, non-

obligatory blameworthy acts, and on the other side, non-obligatory praiseworthy acts. And their

conception of ‘ought’ is tied in a complicated manner to both obligatory acts and supererogatory

acts. Or, from a different perspective, they have a moral spectrum with heinous acts on one end

and supererogatory acts on the other: a fairly simple system similar to that of the perfectionist. But

a further obscure category is then imposed: the merely obligatory, where obligation is a fairly

Must We Be Perfect?

24

enigmatic notion which is not easily reducible or linked to any other prior moral concept. On the

perfectionist picture, moral reasons are straightforwardly linked to both praiseworthiness and

obligations: you are obliged to do (one of) the action(s) you have the most moral reasons for, and

the more moral reasons you act on, the more praiseworthy your actions is, and the more moral

reasons you eschew, the more blameworthy your action is. On supererogationism, there is no such

link between praiseworthiness, obligations, and moral reasons. That is, if moral reasons determine

obligations, then the praiseworthiness of supererogatory acts cannot be determined by moral

reasons. On the other hand, if moral reasons determine praiseworthiness, then obligations are not

linked to (or are arbitrarily linked to a certain amount of) moral reasons. Assuming perfectionists

can explain the moral landscape as well as supererogationists, this constitutes an offensive

multiplication of kinds.16

The Supererogationist Picture

Less than obligatory Obligatory Supererogatory

Less Praiseworthy More Praiseworthy

The Perfectionist Picture

Less than obligatory Obligatory

Less Praiseworthy Moral Reasons More Praiseworthy

Finally, there is a kind of simplicity which we call maximal degree simplicity. This was

introduced by Richard Swinburne (2004, p. 55) and has been defended in more detail by the present

authors (Miller 2016). The idea is that maximal degrees of properties are simpler than non-

maximal, large degrees of properties. So, for example, omnipotence is held to be a simpler property

16 See McNamara (1996) for an illustration of this point: his very sophisticated analysis of the structure and interrelationships of moral concepts is in part reflective of the multiplicity of concepts he needs to incorporate the supererogatory.

Must We Be Perfect?

25

than megapotence. This is relevant because perfectionists hold that obligation is simply reducible

to a maximal degree of goodness. This makes obligation a simple – almost trivial – addition to the

already simple view of moral reasons and axiology. Supererogationism, on the other hand, has a

relatively obscure view of moral reasons and axiology to begin with – it is not clear whether moral

reasons generate a stronger ‘ought’, for example. In addition to this, there is the imposition of a

new category, obligation, whose relationship with moral reasons and the strength of ‘ought’ is

entirely unclear. It is not simply reducible to a maximal degree of goodness, but rather it lands

fairly arbitrarily on the moral spectrum, with little explanation of why it lands there rather than

anywhere else on the spectrum. This gives it a considerable degree of complexity in comparison

with the perfectionist view.

We noted earlier that there is no natural place for supererogation in any of the main

competing normative ethical traditions. This discussion of theoretical simplicity reinforces these

arguments by showing what an unnatural and ontologically weighty theoretical resource the

supererogationist view of obligation turns out to be. On perfectionism, obligation is easily

reducible to prior theoretical resources. On supererogationism, it comes as a surprise, with no

obvious explanation of its existence, its position on the moral spectrum, or any other of its features.

This is true with respect to any given ethical paradigm, and as we have now shown, this is a

symptom of a more fundamental theoretical problem.

6. Objections

Multiple Best Actions

It may be objected that we can never be obligated to perform two incompatible actions.

But since there are often two equally good actions, which are also better than any other possible

action, at least one (and perhaps both) must be supererogatory. We respond, first, that this would

not suffice for supererogation, since the ostensibly supererogatory action would not be going

beyond duty – only rising in parallel with it. A supererogationist may object that, because one may

Must We Be Perfect?

26

perform either of the two acts, this suffices to make the act optional and, therefore, supererogatory.

However, in this case, the optionality is shallow. On the perfectionist picture, for any given

situation there is a set of best actions (perfectionism need not hold that there is always only one

uniquely best act). While none of these are uniquely obligatory, their disjunction is.17 That is, while

there is a thin sense in which I have the option of performing action A, I do not have the option

of not performing one of the actions in the set; I must perform (for example) either A or B.

Degrees of Imperfection

This discussion permits us to respond to a further objection: by making the demands of

morality so stringent, perfectionism is not sufficiently sensitive to the variety of suboptimal actions,

dismissing them all as failures. But there is no reason to suppose that perfectionism is any less

sensitive to a spectrum of good vs bad than is supererogationism. Just as supererogationists with

their ternary or quaternary categorisation of actions can still say that some actions within a category

are better than others (for example, killing a child is worse than beating a child, even though both

are strictly impermissible), so perfectionists can equally say that some non-obligatory actions are

better or worse than others. Indeed, as we saw in the discussion of theoretical simplicity, the

spectral quality of morality actually fits better with perfectionism than with supererogationism.

Optimising Agents are Bad Agents

There is another worry in this vicinity, which is that perfectionism’s desire for moral

optimisation is too cold and calculating to properly represent our sense of agency in the ethical

arena. By focusing so intensely on the best possible action to do the most good, perfectionists

become resistant to ordinary, less ‘efficient’ means of doing good, like buying a homeless person

a cup of coffee at the expense of buying potentially life-saving malaria nets for vulnerable people

17 This allows us to respond to the following objection: is the omission of a best action not a failure of obligation? We propose that this omission is simply morally indeterminate, as are many other under-described actions (like the action of removing someone’s appendix, which is sometimes good but in most scenarios fairly perverse).

Must We Be Perfect?

27

in Nigeria. Bernard Williams (1973) raises a similar concern for utilitarianism, arguing that if

utilitarianism is true, then the right answer to various moral dilemmas should be obvious; but the

answers are not obvious, and this is evidence against the theory. The objection to our thesis alleges

that perfectionists want to say that buying coffee for a homeless person is a failure to meet our

obligations – a wrong. And this is counterintuitive to many people.

We respond in four ways: first, as noted above, that perfectionism may still be sensitive to

different ways of failing our obligations – there is still the world of difference between barely

subobligatory good acts and heinous crimes. Second, we note that this problem is not unique to

perfectionism. For supererogationists, it will be equally true to say ‘you could have done better’

and, arguably, ‘you should have done better’ to the generous coffee-giver. It is not clear why this

is any more intuitively acceptable than the claim that the coffee-giver failed his obligations. Third,

as we have already discussed, insofar as this is similar to the ‘we’re not so bad’ objection, the force

of this objection is undermined considerably by the empirical evidence presented above.

Fourth, we note that if this result really is unacceptable, it is not a result of perfectionism

per se. Rather, it is a function of the conjugated ethical system in play. The objection assumes that

the relevant ethical system is essentially utilitarian – where morality is tightly correlated with, and

largely a function of, axiology. In this sort of utilitarian system, where any dividing line between

obligatory and supererogatory is likely to be arbitrary and implausible, the obligatory action will

always be the one which maximises the relevant axiological parameter (e.g. pleasure). And in this

case, clearly anything less will be a failure of obligations. Since there is no natural place for a

division between supererogatory and obligatory actions on these utilitarian views, utilitarianism

naturally commends only the best action as obligatory. But then it is clear that the real problem

with this result, as Williams points out, is utilitarianism, not perfectionism. Perhaps the following

diagnosis is correct: because perfectionism and utilitarianism are both concerned with optimisation

in some sense, they are thought by many people to naturally fit together. But there is no reason

why perfectionists should be particularly keen on utilitarianism vis-à-vis other normative ethical

Must We Be Perfect?

28

theories. Perfectionists are free to endorse any number of ethical systems, or even a collection of

first-order moral judgments not easily reducible to any simple normative formula.

In utilitarian theories, the morality of action tends to be tightly linked with consequences

and states of affairs – and in particular, the morality of an action is a proportional function of the

axiological value of the resultant state of affairs. The better the (intended or actual) resultant state

of affairs, the better the action. Clearly most ethical systems take resultant states of affairs into

account, but they are not the only determinants of the morality of an action, and it is certainly not

the case that the morality of an action linearly follows the value of the consequences. There is no

clear reason in our own ethics, for example, to suppose that working for an hour and donating the

£10 to the Anti Malaria Foundation is always better than spending that hour tutoring a struggling

student at a local school. Which is better will depend on a number of other factors, and in some

or many cases neither will be better than the other. The only reason we may seem forced to choose

is if we have been tricked into accepting a consequentialist paradigm that is simply alien to our

own ethics, and the ethics of many others.18 Likewise, there is no reason to think that a perfectionist

version of any given ethical system entails that the more effective donation is better than the less

effective tutoring. So, perfectionism is certainly not committed to the wrongness of less than

maximally efficient good actions.

Supererogation and Rights

Another objection is that moral intuitions are not the only support that supererogation

enjoys. Benn (2017) argues that the existence of a category of supererogatory actions is entailed by

some conceptions of natural ‘paired’ rights: ‘Anyone who accepts the existence of paired rights on

any plausible account of rights therefore also accepts the possibility of supererogatory actions’ (p.

279). By ‘paired rights’ Benn refers to morally significant acts that are also optional—that is, non-

18 This is not to say that consequences are irrelevant, or that we should not at all aim for efficiency in their charitable giving.

Must We Be Perfect?

29

discretionary actions that we may permissibly do or refrain from doing. An example of such a right

may be the right to demand the repayment of a loan. Accepting such a category entails the

acceptance of supererogation, Benn argues, because while we accept the moral significance of the

action, we lack a duty to either do or refrain from doing it. Therefore, deciding to forgo your right

and forgive your debtors, while exceedingly morally good, is supererogatory.

We do not deny that other features of normative landscape that one accepts may lend

support to supererogation. While Benn herself does not offer a defence of such natural rights in

this paper, she argues that any evidence for their existence may also be evidence for supererogation.

If one accepts these sorts of natural rights, Benn describes supererogation as appearing on the

scene as ‘spandrels’, forming naturally from the rest of the normative architecture. We are not

concerned, however, that such an entailment constitutes a threat to our argument, for two reasons.

First, we presume that a common conception of natural rights is Lockean in nature and,

therefore, far more general than the examples of specific ‘paired rights’ that Benn describes—for

instance, we have a ‘right’ to life, but do we really have a ‘right’ to forgive a loan? If a law were

passed forbidding loaners to forgive loans, would this law trample on one of our natural rights? It

is not clear to us that the word ‘right’ is being used univocally in these two cases.

Second, what is the nature of such rights? For the purpose of making an argument in

favour of supererogation, it cannot be as simple as ‘those things we have the moral option of doing

or not doing’—this would beg the question in favour of supererogationists. Any conception of

rights that produce supererogation as ‘spandrels’ would need to be more theoretically filled-out

without relying on supererogation as a theoretical assumption. While we do not want to argue that

such a task would be impossible, we are unsure ourselves how such an argument would go.

Perfectionism Mischaracterises Obligations

One may think that a necessary feature of something’s being a moral obligation is that they

may be forced, or may force others, to fulfil it. While this at first seems like a tidy way of delineating

Must We Be Perfect?

30

obligatory actions from supererogatory ones, we find this notion highly uncompelling for a few

reasons. The first is that the category of things we may be forced to do, or force others to do, is

highly contingent on in the particular laws of land. Under the Third Reich, certain people groups

could be forced into ghettos. Because we almost certainly do not want to say that these individuals

had a moral obligation to comply, it is clear that not all things we can be forced to do are obligations

of ours. The ability to compel, therefore, cannot be sufficient for something’s being an obligation.

A more charitable way of understanding this sort of compulsion is to say that our

obligations are those things we may be legitimately compelled to do (which would, of course, not

apply to the case of those forced into ghettos). Narveson (1999) seems to hold a similar view about

obligations of justice:

Another important question, which has cropped up in some of our discussions but is nowhere more clearly relevant than here, is the distinction between justice and charity. By justice I here intend those things that we may, if need be, be forced to do—where our actions can be constrained by others to ensure our performance. (p. 144) Narveson’s use of this distinction applies here only to obligations of justice (he still holds that

there are non-enforceable duties of charity), but one may imagine expanding the scope of this idea

to distinguish all supererogatory acts from all obligatory acts. Still, it is relatively easy to think of

cases where this seems wrong. For example, we may think that the state can legitimately prohibit

the murder of innocents; however, depending on one’s normative framework, we may also think

that we are obliged to disregard this legitimate prohibition and murder one innocent for the sake

of saving hundreds of other innocent lives.

Additionally, we doubt that ability to compel is even a necessary feature of moral

obligations. Consider the following statement: fathers who have the means and ability ought to

parent their children. This is a very plausible candidate for a moral obligation. Yet, a father cannot

be forced to do so (though he may be forced to pay child support). Not only can the state not

compel involuntary parenting, but we may also think that nobody can legitimately compel others

to fulfil relational roles, even if such fulfilling is clearly obligatory.

Must We Be Perfect?

31

Failure and Blame

Our final clarification is with regards to blameworthiness. We do not aim to discuss

blameworthiness in detail in this paper, for lack of space. But there is an objection that

perfectionists necessarily hold people to be blameworthy for performing anything other than the

best, obligatory action. Indeed, some build blameworthiness into the very definition of

supererogation: an action is supererogatory if it is praiseworthy to perform, but not blameworthy

not to omit (for example, Mellema 1991, p. 13). We do not accept these entailments, because we

do not accept a linear relationship between the goodness of an action and the degree of

blameworthiness associated with it. There may be many exculpating reasons for any given action

which are related to factors other than the goodness of the action itself. Perfectionism is not

committed to affirming culpability for any failure to perform the obligatory action or disjunction

of actions.

7. Conclusion

In sum, we have clarified our concept of supererogation as follows: supererogation does

not relate merely to good but morally optional actions. An extra criterion is needed: supererogatory

acts must be better than the mere fulfilling of obligations. Along with others, we have asserted that

supererogatory actions are costlier in any given scenario than would be the mere meeting of

obligations. We have also clarified our conception of perfectionism: perfectionism does not entail

a uniquely best action in all circumstances. It is compatible with – and especially consonant with

– the view that non-obligatory actions can still range anywhere from utterly heinous to nearly

perfect. Finally, perfectionism is consistent with a variety of ethical theories and is not wedded to

cold, impersonal calculations about how to pick the best of millions of possible options. While we

wish neither to undermine the importance of striving for the very best, nor to exclude the

possibility that there are very few best possible actions in any given case, our theory leaves it

entirely open how large the set of best possible actions is.

Must We Be Perfect?

32

In this paper, we have shown belief in supererogatory actions, so conceived, to be

erroneous on several grounds: the lack of natural room for them in the standard versions of the

three main normative ethical systems, as well as some non-standard and competing systems;

supererogationism’s dependence upon intuitions about our moral status; and its theoretical

complexity vis-à-vis perfectionism.

We do not deny that supererogationism is intuitively appealing, and we do not seek to

claim that intuitions never offer insight on important ethical issues. What we have sought to do is

show that belief in supererogatory actions relies almost solely on intuitions, and especially

intuitions about our moral standing, and that in this case this is very shaky ground. The preference

for simplicity, our moral theories themselves, and the relevant empirical data all support the thesis

that obligations are far more widespread than we might have otherwise conceived. Naturally,

therefore, it is also plausible that we fail them more often than we might have otherwise

conceived—a notion that should keep us both sombre and vigilant.

Must We Be Perfect?

33

References Alston, W. P., 1989. ‘Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists’, Divine Nature and Human Language, London: Cornell University Press. Arisotle., & Irwin, T., 1985. Nicomachean ethics. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Baron, M., 1987, ‘Kantian Ethics and Supererogation’, Journal of Philosophy, 84:237-62. Benn, C., -2018a. ‘Supererogation, optionality and cost’. Philosophical Studies 175 (10):2399-2417. - -2018b. ‘The Enemy of the Good: Supererogation and Requiring Perfection’. Utilitas 30 (3):333-354. -2017. ‘Supererogatory Spandrels’. Etica and Politica / Ethics and Politics 19 (1):269-290. -2015. ‘Over-Demandingness Objections and Supererogation’ Brinkmann, M., 2015. ‘Disjunctive duties and supererogatory sets of actions’. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 77:67-86. Clark, M., 1978. ‘The Meritorious and the Mandatory’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 79, pp. 23-33. Crisp, R., 2013, ‘Supererogation and Virtue’, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, 3:13-34. Heyd, D.,

-2015a, ‘Supererogation’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. -2015b, ‘Can Virtue Ethics Account for Supererogation?’, Supererogation, ed. C. Cowley, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 77: 25-47 -1982, Supererogation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hill, T., 1971, ‘Kant on Imperfect Duty and Supererogation’, Kant-Studien, 61:55-76. Hooker, B., -2016, ‘Rule Consequentialism’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). -2002, Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality. Oxford University Press UK. Hoorens, V., 1995, ‘Self-Favoring Biases, Self-Presentation, and the Self-Other Asymmetry in Social Comparison’, Journal of Personality, 63:793-817. Hursthouse, R., 1999, On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnson, R. and Cureton, A., 2016, ‘Kant’s Moral Philosophy’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Kant (trans. Wood, A.W. and Schneewind, J.B.), 2002, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kawall, J., 2009, ‘Virtue Theory, Ideal Observers, and the Supererogatory’, Philosophical Studies, 146:179-96.

Must We Be Perfect?

34

McNamara, P., 1996, ‘Making Room for Going Beyond the Call’, Mind 105. 419. Mellema, G., 1991, Beyond the Call of Duty: Supererogation, Obligation, and Offence, SUNY Press. Merritt, A.C., et al., 2010, ‘Moral Self-Licensing: When Being Good Frees Us to Be Bad’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4:344-57. Mill, J. S., 1969, ‘Auguste Comte and Positivism’, in The Collected Works of J. S. Mill (vol. 10), Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Miller, C., 2016, ‘Is theism a simple hypothesis? The simplicity of omni-properties’, Religious Studies 52 (1):45-61. Moore, G.E., 1948. Principia Ethica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Narveson, J., 1993; 2nd edition. Moral Matters. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press. Parfit, D., 1984. Reasons and Persons, Oxford University Press. Scanlon, T., 1998, What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Smart, J. J. C. & Williams, B., 1973. Utilitarianism For and Against. Cambridge University Press Stangl, R., 2016, ‘Neo-Aristotelian Supererogation’, Ethics, 126:339-65. Street, S., 2006, ‘A Darwinist Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value’, Philosophical Studies, 127:109-66. Swanton, C., 2001, ‘A Virtue Ethical Account of Right Action’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 112:32-52 Swinburne, R., 2004, The Existence of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Timmermann, J., 2005, ‘Good but Not Required?—Assessing the Demands of Kantian Ethics’, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2:9-27. Urmson, J. O., (1958). ‘Saints and heroes’, In A. I. Melden (ed.), Essays in Moral Philosophy. University of Washington Press. Wolf, S., 1982. ‘Moral Saints’. Journal of Philosophy 79 (8):419-439. Wynn, M. (2015), ‘Supererogation and the relationship between religious and secular ethics: some perspectives drawn from Thomas Aquinas and John of the Cross.’ Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 77:163-183.

Must We Be Perfect?

35

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to an anonymous referee for Inquiry for their very helpful suggestions that significantly improved this paper. Additionally, we would like to extend special thanks to Frank Cabrera, Alexander Jech, Rebecca Stangl, Robert Streiffer, Kyle Blanchette, Josh Parikh, and Joseph Jedwab for reading and commenting on (in some cases, several) drafts of this paper.